What has gone before, stories that you have loved

woman

Decades pass. For some people, they pass more quickly, others still look like they could be in college still.

Then there are those gentlemen, ones with the hair that was so perfect in school, but nature has had the twisted sense of humor to stop the hair from growing out the top of their heads and start growing out their ears.

One fellow, now keeps his hair cut short to hide the thinning patch on the scalp, but he forgot (forgets on a regular basis?) to trim the hair in his ears.

I mean, wow! I am sitting there and it gets suddenly shady when he walks by. Five feet of ear fuzz is scary. He could have braided it into a toupe’ and just used his ears to anchor it.

One beautiful woman I did not remember, I stood and talked with her for nearly a half-hour before I realized at one time, she was a he and he was a decent baseball player in school. THEN! Then I could relate to some of what she said. Before my epiphany, I was lost to the references.

Once she realized I did not realize who she was, we both had a laugh and restarted the conversation with honest laughter (No cues needed this time) instead of polite chuckles. (Well, okay, always polite chuckles. I am not known to laugh much.)

One woman walked up and gave me a huge hug. I did not recognize her at all, but faked the “Ohh, I remember. I was so in love with you.” to her. She blushed, giggled, and walked off with a huge thank you and another hug.

She chased me down later to hug me again, introducing me to her date (her son) and brag about him also being an aspiring screenwriter. (in community college working on his english degree and theatrical arts) I can only nod and wish luck.

Then she squeezed the stuffin out of me when I was leaving.

I have decided that crowds I do disdain. But hugs? thems I can take, as long as we are on the far edge of any group.

I bumped into an English teacher who is impressed with my writing on all the subjects you have looked over on here. She even remembered how to spell my name. lol. And my sister (who was not there) I did not bother to mention my niece or nephews. lol.

Funny however, that the teacher got shorter than I remember. Couldn’t be that I am taller than I was as a freshman in high school?

Finally I left, as I was reaching the parking lot, I could hear the class years being called to come front and center.

“Oh the heck with it.” I turned around and walked back to see what it was. (Pictures) the woman with the son-date intercepted me on the way back and dragged me over to meet a couple more friends in the same class. Each one asking me about my writing when we realized we missed the photo op.

So I laughed and left just as I arrived. Just a little squeezed out, is all.

really, it was just okay. There were few people I met at first that I spent much time with. And for a large fraction of the time, I sat alone.

So no drink, no booze, no friends other than someone that was a hugging humunculus. (She was short)

So I came stag and sober, I left stag and sober.

that is just the way it always should be. Keeps us men out of trouble.

Funny how it works. When just out of high-school, the men looked at the girls, a few years later, the moms were fair game, now, they are grandma’s and they are still fun to flirt with from what I saw.

Waitaminute! *Grandmas*? Well. yeah, so it seems. The grampa’s were getting some action too. Um..wait… wut? When are these guys who are my age…”Grandpas”?

Well, this has been an abusive night. I am not that old. I refuse to be that old.

So on that note, I am going to drink my Ensure and Geritol, kick off my orthopaedic supports and go to bed. Them old folks are too creaky looking for my mental health.

Like this:

It boils and seethes on the surface of Sol, the solid calcium ferrite surface heated by the energy of the high energy photons that kept the oceans if neon plasma lit with the glow of seething heat from the core of the sun. Energy generated a hundred-thousand years before this day, slowly making way outward in the slow, random walk, transferring heat to the surrounding material along the way.

On the surface of the sun, photons finally freed from the surface traveled through space at full speed. A blue/green and white marble that orbited Sol was just a small speck at this distance as the photons sped away from the star that had given them birth. The electromagnetic packets of energy quickly reached full speed of nearly three-hundred thousand kilometers-per-second after passing through the photosphere.

While the photons sped their way towards the only planet with life and a loving couple on the back of a rumbling motorcycle, Lucy Sprecks got into her car. She was now approaching ninety-years of age. Joshua, her shining star of her life, had passed away years before. These days, Lucy just went and donated time to charity work and her church.

Sharing the love of the good book became the only reason she left the house these days. Her own child rarely visited, busy with his own life.

Long passed her addictions of prescription medications, Lucy now drank her bottle of wine each lunch time and was looking forward to today’s lunch with her friends. Edna supplied more wine than any of the Society of Lady Druids.

Lucy was certain she would convert the heart of Edna to the true path of Christian religion. Then a sudden memory!

“I forgot my bible!” Sighed Lucy. She pulled over and double checked in her oversized purse. It was not there, nor was the passage she had copied out for Edna to read. She neededd to turn around and go back home. She loved her big car, the Mercedes made her feel safe, but it was difficult to do tight maneuvers with Lucy barely able to look over the steering wheel of the powerful turbo-diesel German-built car.

In space, waves of EM radiation, the photons given birth tens of thousands of years before, now closed the distance at the cosmic speed limit speeding to the destination on earth.

After finishing his education of the different laws of the different Celt tribes, Kane had made friends with the Parisii tribe, but the growing land that would be one of the largest metropolitan areas in the future, for now it was a small place to trade.

Still, raw materials from the inland areas were good for trade. Kane and Bronwyn had a good name as tinkerers and artisans of the crafts. Anything from a copper pot to bronze and gold torcs for the neck and upper arm.

Kane had figured out how to tie knots in the metals, gold being the easiest to braid into popular shapes. Still, he knew how to work the metals carefully.

Bronwyn had patience to inlay gold wire after both she and Kane had carved a pattern that they had worked out.

Often in intricate patterns, it was the High Priests of the different religions that spoke of how life was that inspired them. However bringing the Celtic knot to life was a trick. Not many of the High Priests agreed on the beauty.

But the concept of the tree of life, this intrigued Kane and discussed in many nights with Bronwyn as they carved, first in clay, then wood and finally in bronze and gold, an inlaying of gold in bronze or copper in bronze was often highly sought after. In trade, the artisans that they were, received different items in trade.

Often they took ingots of raw metals, frequent was a trade for meats and grains.

Coins were always accepted, of course, but when a young man wanted to buy something to woo a beautiful young woman or impress her family, a cow or other farm animal would be taken in trade.

Bronwyn, more romantic than Kane, would not be above making a beautiful ring out of bronze or brass in a moment’s notice, with the promise to work with the boy to create something even more beautiful out of anything he might like and torcs were common.

The occasional master of captured slaves would take a shine to one and buy gold collars with a certain gem he possessed.

Those owners of slaves tended to get charged fully without breaks on value for the trinkets. Bronwyn had a particular distaste for slavery any kind.

“Slavery will exist for several thousand more years in many shapes, my angel.” Kane would say softly to Bronwyn in the nights where they lay in each other’s arms. “They will have not achieved complete eradication of it until well into the twenty-fifth century.”

“It’s not right, still. No matter the age.” She said dangerously.

“Do not make history, we have to avoid being too well-known.” He said softly.

“Still, it doesn’t make it right.”

“No, it doesn’t, but there exists a great many flaws that humankind must overcome. One thing at a time.”

“I can’t wait.”

The day wore on until they arrived at home. Kane again began packing trinkets, but this time were more for children. Dolls, wheeled pull toys that looked like animals.

Stroking his head as he bent over yet another bag, she smiled at his loading.

“Who do you pack for?”

“Well, we are moving in a fortnight, aren’t we? Back to where we started for a few more years. Plus, I pass out gifts at this time of year, and it is fast approaching. Harvest will begin in a fortnight in most areas. I have a boy who is nine-summers old now and I have a promise to fulfill.”

“And you don’t want to break a promise to a child.”

“No, never. A grownup gives a promise to a child, as sure as your hair grows, you better keep it. They have the souls are most accepting and will make this world a place far better than it could be.”

“And you say not to make history.”

“Oh hush. There are other ways to affect for the positive.” Her husband said. “I will wage war my way. Let others try to figure out how to undo a child’s smile when I finish.”

“Kane, you have to stop this life in time and we have to move away.” Bronwyn stroked his ear and kissed her mate carefully.

Time. He cursed it and welcomed it. They were closing a decade together on the blue planet and he regretted not one moment with her.

Although, time to time, he watched her look at children with a faraway look that women get. She had all the drives of a young human woman, with no chance to produce something that was part of their union. They were a team, forever and always, but by command, they were not allowed to have children.

Her voice brought him out of his thoughts.

“Where do you think we should restart our lives as artists and young couple?” She was looking at herself in a silvered bronze-backed mirror.

Unlike other women everywhere, she strove to make herself look older, but vanity prevented her from striving too hard. Using hardwood ash now and again, she would put in white streak that would look like she had hair of an older woman.

He was finally packed and stood up.

“I am thinking of the middle-sea where Egypt is building pyramids for about another three-hundred years.” Kane pulled at his chin. “Perhaps Athens. I hate to leave this area, the best copper is on the island of our first home.”

“Let us live there on the other side of the island, towards the east. In time, there will rise an empire that will overwhelm this area of Celtica and rename it. They will invade the islands and the Emperor Hadrian will build a wall. If we stay on the island, they will not invade.”

Sitting down in a chair of finely crafted leather and polished wood, he rubbed his forehead thinking.

“Perhaps. Or…maybe… before the empire arises, we move close and disappear in the crowds and be artisans. Or we can move to Athens as I said, and get the trading in there first. Then we can join that fellow that turns water into wine goes about teaching.”
Kane winked and held up his forefinger. “Now there is a person to invite to parties!”

“KANE! Is that all you think of?”

“No, most times I try to think of you, naked.” He winked at his wife.

“KANE!” Bronwyn laughed as she sat in his lap. “You are so bad.”

That night, they slept together, skin to skin after hours of their bodies joining in as many positions as they could think of. Kane dreamed a recurring dream. This night was different, his old name came to the fore of his mind. Worries of having to end this life and start a new one brought on the dreams that a change of place to live in secret once again would be opposed by the one that put him in this world of humans.